


Survivor's Guilt

by ChrisCipher



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Al's dead you guys, Angst, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I love my smol boy but I love to make him suffer, I wrote half of this ages ago and just decided to finish and post it, I'm Bad At Tagging, I'm Sorry, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Please Don't Kill Me, Suicide mention, and Ed is Not Okay, but don't worry nothing happens, how do you tag, not sure if that's something to be happy about though, rush job, this is short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-23
Updated: 2017-11-23
Packaged: 2019-02-06 02:34:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12807747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChrisCipher/pseuds/ChrisCipher
Summary: Al is dead, and Ed is left with nothing





	Survivor's Guilt

**Author's Note:**

> I have no excuse, I just love to see my faves suffer
> 
> This is the first work I've ever posted, so please go easy on me? 
> 
> I hope you enjoy ^^

He was numb.

It wasn’t even intentional, not feeling anything just seemed like the best option lately.

It had been three months now, since  _that_  day.

The day he had lost everything.

His head felt like someone had stuffed an entire ball of wool in there, with the intention of leaving it to rot in his skull forever.

Somewhere in a far off corner of his mind he registered people talking to him, presenting him with words of comfort and pity. He didn’t need them, their words and concern, because nothing had a point anymore. Al was gone, and he wasn’t coming back.

 

It hadn’t even been an exceptionally dangerous mission or anything, just a rogue alchemist, not that powerful according to the records. Everything was going fine, they’d caught the man trying to escape from a shack he’d holed himself up in with a few research notes and gave him over to the local police force to be locked away for whatever it was he’d done exactly.

 

(He couldn’t be bothered to remember anymore, it wasn’t important. Nothing was.)

 

Then they got the news of the chimeras. Apparently there’d been an outbreak in a nearby research facility of the military, and roughly fifteen of the  _lab rats_  had escaped. It shouldn’t have been that dangerous, but neither of them noticed that in the confusion of the escaped chimeras, the recently apprehended alchemist had gotten away until it was too late. He’d somehow gotten his hands on a sword, or maybe he’d transmuted it on the spot, it wouldn’t make a difference. Al’s armor didn’t stand a chance, and the Blood Seal that bound his brother’s soul to the piece of metal was cut neatly in half in a matter of seconds.

He didn’t remember much after that. Everything was hazy except arms holding him back as he tried desperately to get to the armor, make another seal, get the soul back into the vessel dammit, _anything_.

It could have been minutes, or hours, or days even, Ed wasn’t sure, when he dimly noted the presence of dark eyes and black hair in his line of sight, hands that were not usually this gentle on his shoulders.

 

After that, it was all black.

 

* * *

 

 

Time wasn’t relevant anymore. Food and sleep weren’t either, but from time to time he let Mustang’s team force him to eat something, or collapsed from exhaustion where he stood, which was usually in his dorm or the office, where Mustang seemed to insist on him coming for at least a few hours every day to _“get out of that sad, smelly room of yours. You need some fresh air and human interaction.”_

He didn't protest. Didn't do much of anything anymore.  
And maybe he should've found it suspicious that he hadn't been sent on any new missions by the colonel in ages - _ever since_ that _day, really_ \- but he didn't. Because finding his lack of work suspicious would mean getting invested in finding out the reason behind his superior's actions, and getting invested was not within his range of available feelings anymore.

He could tell that Mustang's team worried. Could see it in Havoc and Breda's hectic hand gestures when they talked quietly on the other side of the room, could sense it in lieutenant Hawkeye's soft tone when she offered him the lunch try she'd gotten from the cafeteria, and see it in the worry lines between the colonel's eyes.

He knew they all thought they had to keep an eye on him. Keep him from doing something stupid, something Al would never have wanted for him.  
But he wasn't stupid. Whenever he was plagued by the guilt, asked himself how it was fair that he was still alive when his brother was dead, dead, _dead_ , **_dead all because of you,_ ** he recalled his the other's love for him, remembered how heartbroken Al would be if he killed himself just because he was too weak to live on by himself.

And he could never do that, would never be able to hurt his little brother like that.

So he went on. Numb and automatic in his movements, but he went on.  
Edward Eric went on living alone, suffering the guilt of those who survived.


End file.
